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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.